- Earlier this year, Arizona teachers unions proposed ballot measure — Proposition 212 — that would create administrative guardrails and restrict scholarship eligibility for high-income families.
- After the Arizona Supreme Court found faulty signatures on their petition, the unions lacked enough signatures for the ballot measure.
- Robin Bagley, executive director of the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program, said the Utah Fits All program might be the next target, but parents have nothing to be concerned about.
Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or ESA, program — which started in 2011 — was initially intended to be a small, narrow initiative to help students with disabilities.
Parents could pull their students away from public schools, and take the funding that would have been used at the school, to explore other education options.
But, over time, lawmakers expanded the school choice program, and it became popular with Arizona parents. The program’s budget is now $870 million, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, and serves over 100,000 students.
Teachers unions are angry about the program and what it means for their members, but not just in Arizona.
A recent pushback from unions in Utah’s southern neighbor could directly mirror what might come in the Utah Fits All scholarship program’s future.
How Arizona’s ESA program stayed standing
Earlier this year, Arizona teachers’ unions launched an attack on the ESA program: A ballot measure — Proposition 212 — that would create administrative guardrails and restrict scholarship eligibility for high-income families. Backers of the measure, most prominently the National Education Association, contributed over $7 million to the cause.
To qualify the measure for the November 2026 ballot, it required 255,949 signatures.
A group of plaintiffs filed a complaint in the Maricopa County Superior Court challenging the validity of signatures gathered by the unions. The case quickly escalated to the state’s Supreme Court.
The Arizona Supreme Court disqualified entire signature sheets with faulty addresses. According to court filings, the campaign paid a convicted sex offender, a human trafficker, and other offenders to collect signatures across the state, the Goldwater Institute says.
“Despite spending an unprecedented amount of money in an effort to deceive voters into restricting school choice, the unions could not convince even a small fraction of Arizonans to sign their petition,” said Victor Riches, president and CEO of the Goldwater Institute. “Instead, they had to resort to unlawfully collecting thousands of signatures to try to game the system and dupe their way onto the ballot.”
On Aug. 18, the Supreme Court remanded the case to trial court to perform the final mathematical calculations determining how many signatures were left.
One day later, the trial court issued its final judgment — the number of signatures fell short. The Goldwater Institute said that more than 175,000 signatures turned in for the ballot were invalid, leaving only 245,000.
“Tens of thousands of parents and students across Arizona are breathing a sigh of relief today,” said former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.
Why the failed ballot measure matters in Utah
The Utah Fits All Scholarship Program, which currently serves 20,000 students with an additional 5,500 students on the waitlist, was created only three years ago.
Robin Bagley, executive director of the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program, said in terms of Arizona’s current case ruling having an impact on what might happen here in Utah, “I do think there is a lot of merit to that because this was driven by the teachers’ union.”
Bagley said the teachers unions across the country “have a playbook.”
“The first thing they do,” Bagley explained, “is they challenge the law in the court system.”
This has already happened in Utah. Brown v. Labresh, a case against the Utah Fits All program led by the state’s largest teachers union, is currently pending before the Utah Supreme Court.
“So what we saw playing out in Arizona is the next play in their playbook, so to speak, and that was to take it on in a way that they’ve never done before. In the past, years ago, even here in Utah, they were successful at doing ballot initiatives that removed the laws off the books.”
This, Bagley believes, is what Arizona’s ESA program just survived. Though Utah might be the next target, she believes parents have nothing to be concerned about.
“Our program in its current form is more trustworthy in the optics of what people see and what is being spent in Arizona,” she said.
Arizona’s program is managed by the Arizona Department of Education, while Utah’s is managed by a third-party organization, Odyssey. Arizona also requires no reporting on academic progress or learning outcomes, whereas Utah’s program requests an educational portfolio detailing the student’s achievements.
“Here in Utah, there’s not a single expenditure that doesn’t have eyes on it, whether it’s $1.79 worth or $1,500,” explained Bagley.
Utah’s legislation caps extracurricular and physical education expense to 20% of the total scholarship amount, while Arizona school choice advocates have actively fought in court to prevent restrictions.
Despite differences between the two states, Bagley says a school choice revival is apparent. “What we’re really learning in Arizona is that choice is winning the day,” she said.
“Education ESAs, or like Utah Fits All Scholarship, have flung the door wide open on innovative ideas that meet the needs of children in ways that we could have never imagined. And that’s very exciting,” Bagley said.
For the 20,000 Utah students using school choice scholarships, Arizona’s courtroom victory shows that “education choice is winning the day — and that’s a good message,” says Bagley. But the real test will come when the Utah Supreme Court weighs in on Brown v. Labresh, deciding whether the program is constitutional at all.